Just gave it a quick try. Seems to be a VERY basic editor (limited audio, limited editing functions, total lack of key commands -- iMovie has more going for it in editorial), but the other concepts involved -- how everything is built in, make it really interesting...
I do like the interface a lot. Simple, clean... sort of a mashup of Avid on Mac and FCP 7.

[David Mathis]"It looks to me more like a hybrid of Premiere Pro and After Effects with one key difference -- you own a copy. :-)"

Well that... and it doesn't have a plugin architecture, a scripting engine or an expressions engine. Jokes aside, the 2D/3D tracking, the renderer, the particle engine and built in effects are actually very good (IMO)... not to mention that it can import 3D models. If it were a more open application with plugins and scripting, worked in different color spaces (in high bit depths), handled more professional file formats (DPX, OpenEXR, cDNG, .rd3), and had XML import and export, this package would be really hard to beat for anything under 5k.

Well that... and it doesn't have a plugin architecture, a scripting engine or an expressions engine."

Perhaps they will add those features in somewhere down the road. I came across a video comparing Hit Film with After Effects and thought it was very insightful."

Maybe, although the folks at HF have been pretty adamant from the beginning that they're not interested in providing plugin support. Who knows though, that may change with user demand.

[David Mathis]"Looks like we now have some healthy competition."

I'm not sure I agree... I think HF has some great features and some great technology under the hood. But, I don't think it will be a real competitor until it addresses a few gaps in the feature set... namely DPX/raw/OpenEXR import and better colorspace/high bit depth handling. Otherwise I do like what those guys are doing, and I'm hoping they're working to address some of those issues.

HitFilm internally processes at 16bit color precision already.
Problem: at the moment you will only get 8bit out of it when exporting a video;
but it is said (in the forums) that this will be addressed in the near future.

Of course, 100% 32bit float would be fine,
as well as high-end scaling and optical flow for speed changes and de-interlacing...

HitFilm internally processes at 16bit color precision already.
Problem: at the moment you will only get 8bit out of it when exporting a video;
but it is said (in the forums) that this will be addressed in the near future."

That's definitely a step forward then. I thought they were 8bit all the way through the pipeline. Still, it would be nice to choose between 8, 16 and 32bpc... and of course, output to whichever bit depth required.

[Bernhard Grininger]"Of course, 100% 32bit float would be fine,
as well as high-end scaling and optical flow for speed changes and de-interlacing..."

Absolutely, along with the ability to work in linear and use 3D lookup tables! :-)

I think those guys are doing some good work, and I'm really pulling for them. And though I'm much more interested in Mamba at the moment... I'm looking at HF and wondering if it will become more of a competitor to Smoke than AE. I also wonder if HF is going to be able to shed its image as a tool for fan filmmakers, and cross over into professional production work. I certainly hope it will.

[Bernhard Grininger]"[Shawn Miller] " I'm much more interested in Mamba at the moment"

I'm on OSX, so have no chance to test Mamba.
How is the scaling? The typically silly Bicubic we get everywhere,
or an edge-adaptive Lanczos?

Bernhard"

I'm hoping that Mamba goes cross platform at some point. I've always felt that good software thrives where there is good competition and wide availability. I don't know about the scaling algorithms in Mamba, I've mostly been trying to get a ground level understanding of its operations. So far, I really like it. It's inexpensive and familiar enough that I can seriously consider using it for certain tasks.